IT WAS WRITTEN FOR EVERYBODY, IT BELONGS TO EVERYBODY

ID: 23194

175.00

BENTHAM, Jeremy, Plan of Parliamentary reform, in the form of a Catechism, with reasons for each article. With an introduction, showing the necessity of radical, and the inadequacy of moderate, reform.
London: printed in the year 1817. Reprinted and republished, with notes and alterations, by permission of the author, by T.J. Wooler,
1818.

8vo., (4) + 156pp., with intermittent foxing, particularly in the final gathering and on endpapers, contemporary half calf over marbled boards, some wear to edges, boards rubbed, rebacked and labelled.

Second edition in book form.

This is actually Wooler's re-issue in a single volume of the 1818 text which he had first issued in ten parts of 16 pages each. In this book version all signs of part issues are omitted. Thomas J. Wooler (1786?-1853), the uncompromising editor of the highly radical Black Dwarf> (1817-1824), must have been flattered when Bentham agreed to his request to edit Bentham's Plan> and republish it at a cheaper price and in a style more easily digestible to the 'popular reader'. Wooler for his part told Bentham that he thought it an 'excellent work': Bentham responded with the memorable comment that 'it was written for every body, it belongs to every body'. And, in his letter of approval, Bentham went even further: 'I am duly sensible', he wrote in April 1818, 'of the advantage it cannot but derive from the name of the proposed re-editor, and any improvements he may be pleased to make in it'.